James Levine: 'I doubted I'd ever make it back'

America’s greatest conductor, the Metropolitan's James Levine, tells John
Allison how he beat paralysis to return to the podium – in a wheelchair

From the chair: James Levine leads the Metropolitan Orchestra in Mahler's Seventh Symphony, December 2013

By John Allison

7:05AM BST 17 Apr 2014

When James Levine conducts Così fan tutte at the Metropolitan Opera later this month, audiences in New York – and worldwide, thanks to 'The Met: Live in HD' cinema transmission on April 26 – will be witnessing something both routine and remarkable.

America’s greatest conductor, Levine has been a fixture at the Met since 1971, and music director there since 1976, with a tally of over 2,500 performances in the house to date. Yet, as a consummate Mozartian, he is unlikely to deliver anything musically routine, especially now as he is relishing every minute of being back on the podium. Though he still conducts from his motorised wheelchair, many never expected to see him return when in summer 2011 his health issues all collided and he was left paralysed and unable to work.

Eleven months ago, conducting the Met’s orchestra in a concert at Carnegie Hall, he began a slow and carefully-managed comeback that has seen him return to the pit for three productions so far, the first being the Mozart he now repeats for a few performances as the season winds down.

Though famously interview-shy, when we finally manage to talk – this interview involved hanging around in New York for a few days in order to get the short-notice call when Levine felt able to do it – he speaks quite candidly about his bad fall nearly three years ago, the series of operations that followed and his long period of recuperation. How did he deal with worries about never returning to the podium?

“It wasn’t so much that I was worried. I really didn’t know if I could. I wondered if I would get strong enough, whether the surgery would succeed. It was no fun, but I thought to myself throughout, 'I don’t know anyone who gets through life without having to solve something’, and I was always the luckiest guy I knew. And even though a spinal cord injury is tough, what I’m learning and what I’m involved in as a result is likely to be better for me in the long run than if I had just carried on as before.”

Levine, who will turn 71 in June, has suffered from bad health for some time, but the woes began in earnest in 2006, when he fell on stage in Boston (where he was music director of that city’s famous orchestra) and tore a rotator cuff. The conductor had already been confining his career to the US, when once he was a regular at the world’s most prestigious musical addresses – the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals, and the orchestras of Berlin, Vienna and Munich.

He was also dogged by rumours of Parkinsons, which were long denied, but a couple of years ago he acknowledged that he was managing a non-progressive condition, or “benign Parkinsonism”.

Sadly, he has not so far returned to the piano, the instrument on which he made his debut as a 10-year-old prodigy with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Always adored by singers, his presence as an accompanist has been missed in recent years, but so far he has concentrated his energies on getting back to the podium rather than the piano. “It took me a long time before I was comfortable with the seating balance, and I haven’t gone further. It’s really a project I don’t want to start until I can finish it. We’ll see.”

Levine would not have returned without the patient yet steely determination of the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, who between 2011 and 2013 came under intense pressure – both internal and external – to clarify the absent conductor’s long-term status and prospects as music director.

He was forced to make contingency plans with Fabio Luisi, and many expected to see the Italian – who was rewarded with the title of principal conductor – confirmed in the post. But doing everything he could to hang on to Levine and entice him back, Gelb even had the Met build special wheelchair podiums in the pit and rehearsal rooms, on which the conductor is hoisted, like a deus ex machina, before he raises his baton.

So even if the famously un-progressive conductor – whose anti-surtitle threat of “Over my dead body” more than 20 years ago was circumvented with seatback titles – has doubts about Gleb’s most prized innovation, the Live in HD transmissions to cinema audiences of 200,000 around the globe, he’s hardly likely to say.

He squirms uncomfortably when I raise the subject, and his non-answer speaks volumes: “It’s a pleasure talking to you, but this subject is vast for me, and whenever we talk about something which I need to express carefully, it’s better to come to it fresh.”

No possibility, then, of discussing a programme that has been blamed for cannibalising the Met’s own home audience and so far appears to have done nothing to lower the average age of opera-goers. In a recent speech, the director David Pountney stopped just short of suggesting that the Live in HD experience is to opera what pornography is to sex – but whatever the arguments, the Met is enjoying a big following worldwide.

In good company: Levine with Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo in 1993

Levine is much happier discussing his orchestra, one of the world’s elite operatic bands. “I love this orchestra. It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way to achieve that is to work every day, little by little, until the orchestra’s collective qualities emerge. It’s a very subtle process. And you try deliberately to get players with different qualities which rub off on one another.”

Sitting in on one of Levine’s orchestral rehearsals is both a masterclass in itself and a reminder of why few conductors have ever turned out so many performances at such a high standard. He is a demanding musician, but his podium manner is friendly yet familiar.

“That’s my way of working. If I’m looking for subtleties of nuance, rhythm, tempo, balance – all the things that conductors look for – my perception is interfered with if something isn’t flowing constructively. Solving the problems set by a composer gives us plenty to do already, without any other distractions.”

Gradually expanding his duties again, in 2014-15 Levine will conduct six productions, beginning with more Mozart: a new season-opening production by Richard Eyre of Le nozze di Figaro. “I’m looking forward on every level. I’m crazy about the piece. I’m crazy about our history with it, the way we have done it before and put it together, and I’m ready to be working on a new production with a new cast. I’m crossing fingers and toes and hope it will be all right.”

Next season also includes Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a brave but potentially exhausting challenge, and something Wagnerians will welcome given Levine’s legendary prowess with this composer. “This coming season is just the best estimate I can give for now. +Meistersinger+ is such a musical tonic. I think I need to know whether it’s just too daunting, but I can’t know unless I get in there. I feel that I won’t have a stamina problem, and I don’t have any pain.

“If I carry on in this direction, who knows what might be possible? All my doctors are completely encouraging. I might be able to work quite a while longer.”